What is a wildcard?
A wildcard is a character which stands for any letter. You can include wildcards in a Quick search or an Advanced search to make your search more flexible.
Two wildcards are available:
- The question mark ? represents the occurrence of any one single character
- The asterisk * represents the occurrence of any number of characters (or no character at all)
A search with a wildcard retrieves all results which contain matching terms. For example
- c?t finds cat, cot, cut
- c*t finds cat, caught, commencement, conflict, consent, cot, cut, etc.
Using wildcards in a search
Wildcards are useful if you do not know how to spell a word or if you are not sure in what form the term you want might appear.
- The search term *sychok?n?s?s finds psychokinesis
- The term colo*r matches color and colour
- The term chorograph* finds chorographer, chorographic, chorographical, chorographically
More on Quick searching:
More on Advanced searching:
- Search tips
- Results list
- Choosing your search area
- Using filters to refine your search
- Searching for more than one term at once
- My Searches
